Monday, June 4, 2007

post punk

I must digress from fashion for a second. These days, while the eyes have still been wandering from rack to rack, my mind has been pondering on all the great music we are fortunate (and have been) enough to listen to. These days, I've been tickled silly by the likes of the Moonrats and No Age, two bands that frequently play Los Angeles. Time to thank Mom and Pop for not immigrating to buttfuck-nowhere, where shows come few and far between. Look at any tour schedule for any band and you will see that Los Angeles/NYC/SF are always covered. Night after night, we find ourselves front row, dead center, hair wet from sweat, body pulsating with intense musical bliss. The cacophonic screams are almost pleasant sounding when accompanying basslines, drumbeats, and handclaps. Los Angeles is its very own stage with a bill that continues to draw out the best of the best crowds and sometimes, the worst of the worst (ever been to the Smell on a industrial punk night? Yea. Nuff said).

Anyway, enough I HEART LA-speak, I just want to talk about a band I've grown to really appreciate and love. MAXIMUM JOY, a post-punk band of the 80's whose music has influenced much of the sound popular today. The band has fused jazz, reggae (or so they say), punk together for a sound unique to their not so complicated counterparts at the time. I'd say that some of it is very Police-esque, but a little weirder, more obscure. Sometimes you hear this stuff and you think, what the hell? But mostly, you are impressed by their desires to liberate themselves from post-punk hell = electronic pop. But mostly, you think -- this sounds like the Rapture in neolithic garb. Oh yea, they're pretty fashionable too. I think.